Car Found at Motel Belonged to Man Who Was Killed and Dismembered

By ROBERT HANLEY and JASON GEORGE

Published: June 5, 2004

A car found in a motel parking lot in Atlantic City in early May belonged to a slain computer expert who worked at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the police said yesterday, deepening the mystery of how, when and where the man was killed and dismembered.

The car was improperly parked in the lot at the Flamingo Motel on Pacific Avenue and was towed on May 8 by a private company, said Lt. Michael Tullio, spokesman for the Atlantic City police.

He said Atlantic City detectives had impounded the car and were holding it as evidence in the disappearance, murder and dismemberment of the computer programmer, William T. McGuire, 39.

Lieutenant Tullio said the Atlantic City police would turn the car over to detectives from Virginia Beach, Va., who are heading the investigation. Parts of Mr. McGuire's dismembered body were found in three suitcases off the Virginia coast between May 5 and 16, the Virginia Beach police say. A fisherman found the first suitcase floating in the lower Chesapeake Bay on May 5; a graduate student found the second on an island on May 11; and a boater found the third on May 16, they say.

The police in Virginia Beach said on Thursday that they had no idea when or where Mr. McGuire, the father of two young boys, was killed. They have refused to say if they knew anything about his travels before he was murdered and they declined yesterday to discuss the recovery of his car in Atlantic City.

Mr. McGuire's car was towed from the Flamingo because it did not have a permit to park in the lot, said Kham Wahab, who identified himself as the manager of the motel. He said detectives had examined the motel's registration documents yesterday and on Thursday and had found none indicating that Mr. McGuire had rented a room there in early May. The 68-room motel is about halfway between two casino hotels on Pacific Avenue, the Hilton and the Tropicana. Officials at both declined to say yesterday whether Mr. McGuire had registered as a guest, citing privacy rules.

Co-workers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology were stunned by the killing, officials there said.

''It's totally bizarre,'' said Thomas Terry, head of the institute's department of information resource development and Mr. McGuire's boss. ''Everybody here is shocked, and nobody wants to talk about it to anybody.'' He said grief counselors were helping Mr. McGuire's co-workers.

Mr. Terry said that Mr. McGuire was in good spirits when he left for a two-week vacation on April 30 and that he was excited about a new home he and his wife, Melanie, a 31-year-old nurse, had bought in rural Warren County, N.J.

''As far as I knew, he was going to stay around and move to the new house and get settled,'' Mr. Terry said.

When Mr. McGuire failed to return to work on May 17, as scheduled, Mr. Terry said, he spoke with Mrs. McGuire by telephone. ''She didn't know where he was,'' he said.

No one ever reported him missing, the police say.

At the time, the family was living in a town house in Woodbridge, N.J. Last Saturday, Mrs. McGuire and her parents removed all the furnishings, a neighbor said on Thursday.

In recent months, Mr. McGuire and about 10 other programmers in Mr. Terry's department had been working with local health officers in New Jersey to expand a computerized, statewide health-alert network for the state's Department of Health and Senior Services. The system is designed to transmit emergency health notices dealing with anything from food poisoning to anthrax and bio-terrorism from Trenton to local health officials, police and fire departments and ambulance corps.

The computerized system links them with state health experts via e-mail, fax and telephones. Mr. McGuire spent much of his time recently working in communities with local officials, instructing them and upgrading their computers.

Donald Sebastian, the institute's vice president of research and development, said the network did not involve secret or classified work. He called Mr. McGuire's murder tragic. ''I can't imagine it has any connection to his job,'' he said.